Fallout New Orleans
by IncredibleMeatza420
Summary: Mudd, the punk rocker of the Wastes, had no purpose in the Capital Wasteland. The Enclave was gone and the basin was clean. He had no family and no friends. His battle with depression is pushing away every girl he tried to get close to. He aches for human compassion, but can't seem to give it himself. Will he be able to start over in new Orleans?


Chapter 1: A Long Journey

The only light in the room was the burning tip of his cigarette. It glowed bright orange, flaking off into small patches of red and yellow. He sighed and flicked the cigarette. The tip exploded in a flurry of embers.

"When are you going to eva stop that?" Clover's nasally voice attacked his ear drums.

He took another drag and blew it in her face. She sputtered and coughed, cursing him. She flung the covers off their naked bodies and leaped out of bed. "Get lost, Clover."

She bit her lip. "Eulogy neva treated me like this!"

He snorted. "Well, I ain't fucking Eulogy. And you ain't fucking him neither. Not right now, at least." He blew out a trail of smoke through his nose. "You know, since you keep bitchin' about him, why don't you go crawling back to him, huh?"

She took in a sharp breath, as if she was trying not to cry. "I... I-"

" _I...I"_ He mocked. "You can't what? Make it to him on your own? You're pathetic, y'know that? Can't even get me up and you want to try to make it out there."

She choked out a sob. "Why are you so mean to me?"

He chuckled as he put out his cigarette. "Ain't you been paying enough attention this whole time? I'm a dick to everyone if you're too ditzed out to notice by now. Are you gettin' back in bed or what? It's late and I'm too drunk to be stayin' up much longer."

She stood still for a long time, his cold eyes watching her. She looked as if she would actually leave, until she slowly climbed back into bed. "I'm sorry, lova."

He tugged the sheets back over them. "Yeah yeah, whatever."

He lit another cigarette and took a swig of the vodka on the table. The night was chilly outside. The hotel room in Tenpenny had been the only place he felt safe enough to drink as much as he wanted. The ghouls he let in had repaid him in his own suite on the top floor.

"Lova?" Clover asked nervously.

"Yeah?" He blew out another puff of smoke.

"We've been travelin' togetha for a while. And you neva seem to like me. And I don't understand. Why did you buy me from Eulogy if you didn't like me?"

He shrugged. "Needed pussy on the reg. You seemed like a pretty viable option. So I bought you off that sorry excuse of a human bein'."

She slapped him across the face in rage. "You're one to fuckin' talk!" He returned the hit, sending her across the room with a yelp. "You- you hit me," she mumbled, stunned.

He spit in the trash can. "So you can throw it, but you're too much of a bitch to take it?"

Clover curled into herself on the floor and cried into her hands. "I can't stand you. I want to go back to Eulogy!"

He snorted. _"Eulogy fuckin' this! Eulogy fuckin' that!_ Well maybe if you weren't such an annoyin' bitch with a voice that could make a baby cry, I'd be nicer!" He shouted.

She tugged her dress on quickly. "I can't take it any more!"

"Get fuckin' lost, then! Go cryin' back to Eulogy, if you even have any ass for him left if you actually get back there!"

She spit at his feet and stormed out of the room in a hurry. He sat on the bed and chugged the last of the vodka. He chucked it at the wall and it shattered. "Fuck!"

He hadn't been physically alone in months. Emotionally on the other hand, he had been alone for years. His father long gone and six feet under, his mother died long before he could remember, all his friends wanted nothing to do with him. They had all seen what he had become. He was an asshole through and through. He didn't think he had any redeemable qualities.

* * *

He passed out for the night and woke up at noon the next day to a loud, angry knock. He grumbled and told them to go away. Roy Philips barged in and slapped a piece of paper down on the bed. He looked at it blearily and read "eviction."

 _Fuck_.

He rubbed his eyes and sat up under the covers. Roy looked pissed and waited for an answer. "We've had it with you. You and your girl don't stop fucking and fighting, and frankly, we don't want to hear you guys screaming and breaking shit."

He slid a hand over his head and ran his fingers through his long mohawk, limp from the lack of gel. "Well, she's gone now. She ain't going to be a problem. Is that all you needed? Okay, goodbye."

He fell back down onto the bed and Roy yanked him back up. "Beat it, Mudd. You overstayed your welcome."

Mudd threw the ghouls hands off of his body and tugged the sheets back over his shoulders, obviously trying to get more sleep. "Try asking again some other day."

He closed his eyes and heard the cocking of a gun. He didn't have to open his eyes to know that it was trained on him at this very moment. He sighed heavily and threw the sheets down as he got up. "Give me an hour to get my shit and I'll be out of your hair, ghoul."

"You got fifteen minutes." Roy bit out as he slammed the door behind him.

Mudd wasted no time getting dressed and ready to leave. He had managed to pack all his belongings from the hotel room into his pack he carried with him throughout the years in the wasteland. Roy banged on the door, letting him know his fifteen minutes were up. "Get out, kid!"

He pushed his way past the ghoul and his body guard into the hallway and didn't look back as he left the tower for good. He was back in the wasteland, homeless and very, very alone. After several hours in a random direction, he stumbled upon Clover, or what was left of her. She had been mauled by animals, or cannibals.

Mudd felt no remorse for the girl and ignored her body. He didn't know where he was going, or what he was looking for, but he knew he would find it, or them, eventually. He always did.

* * *

Weeks had passed and he was still wandering through the wastes. He had taken back his nickname from the old days: Lone Wanderer. Everyone knew him on sight by the green mohawk and rocket launcher he kept in very good condition in case things took a turn for the worse. He had left a trail of bodies, stuffed full of railroad spikes and spoons fired out of the launcher.

Wherever he went, people feared him, and respected him. He was no longer in the Capital Wasteland. He had made it somewhere south. That much he knew. The weather had grown hotter and he had encountered many mutated mosquitoes. Animals, like usual, left him alone. He traded when he passed caravans, drank whatever he could when he could, ate what he found, killed what he had to, and slept when he needed. He walked for seventeen hours a day for weeks. This was the 22nd day.

All the signs he had passed were illegible, bullet holes from target practice or just faded from the sun over the past two hundred years. He had followed a highway out of D.C. and kept to the roads. The only issue was the bands of raiders and the newer wildlife. Mutated alligators and grown to resemble deathclaws, but they had longer torsos, walked on all fours, no horns, and longer noses. From what the locals around here had called them, Mudd had learned that they were called gatortads and something to be very afraid of, due to their ability to do everything a deathclaw could do along with the fact that they evolved from good swimmers.

Mudd had also noticed that the dialect here was much different compared to the North. From where he had come from, Boston had seemed to be the place of the accent most people took on. Down here, it was something very strange. He had even picked up some bits and pieces of the language spoken casually. It had sounded much like the language the fancy women spoke in the movies the vault played on Saturday nights. He recalled Mr. Brotch saying it was French.

After days of wandering aimlessly, Mudd had stumbled across a legible sign. The faded blue metal was peeling and rusted. A thick layer of dust covered most of the sign. So far, it said "Wel t ew O eans own."

Mudd used his sleeve to wipe away the dust and watched it fall to the ground in a deep brown cloud. He looked back at the sign and smiled as he read it out loud. "Welcome to New Orleans Downtown."


End file.
